Carbon capture could help the nation's coal plants reduce greenhouse gas emissions, yet economic challenges are part of the reason the technology isn't widely used today. That could change if power plants could turn captured ...

Researchers at the George Washington University (GW) have identified that the number of federal and state climate lawsuits has been growing since 2006 in the most extensive study to date on the nature and impact of judicial ...

The annual assessment of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the JRC and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) confirms that CO2 emissions have stalled for the third year in a row.

With President Trump planning to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, a new poll found that 55 percent of Americans now want their local and state governments to fight global warming. And indeed, states, regions, cities, ...

The oceans are our lifeline and the lungs of our planet producing 70% of the oxygen we breathe. They regulate our climate and provide us with food, new medicines, and energy. However, the ocean - and therefore the future ...

Could cellulosic biofuels - or liquid energy derived from grasses and wood - become a green fuel of the future, providing an environmentally sustainable way of meeting energy needs? In Science, researchers at the U.S. Department ...

The next revolution in transportation is expected to be shared autonomous vehicles, with personal cars yielding to driverless cars summoned on demand. For instance, Uber passengers in San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Phoenix ...

Greenhouse gas

Greenhouse gases are gases in an atmosphere that absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. Common greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. In our solar system, the atmospheres of Venus, Mars and Titan also contain gases that cause greenhouse effects. Greenhouse gases greatly affect the temperature of the Earth; without them, Earth's surface would be on average about 33°C (59°F) colder than at present.

Human activities since the start of the industrial era around 1750 have increased the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The 2007 assessment report compiled by the IPCC observed that "changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, land cover and solar radiation alter the energy balance of the climate system", and concluded that "increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations is very likely to have caused most of the increases in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century".